The Learning Zone - Everyday Action for Learning

Learning is key to leadership. It's a simple idea. However, we also know that learning is complex with many styles, approaches, and theories. It is easy to propose that learning is essential but how does one simplify the concept into everyday action.

Everyday action about learning recently came to me as I read Monday Morning Leadership: 8 Mentoring Sessions You Can't Afford to Miss by author David Cottrell. Monday Morning Leadership (MML) is a short book of practical advice that is set as a story where a manager named Jeff becomes a student of leadership through weekly discussions and coaching with his mentor. Tony, the mentor, takes his student down a journey of sage and practical advice for leaders and managers.

Tony's advice throughout the story is solid and accessible. His advice is consistent with the insights offered here on Lead Quietly. However, no section of MML reasonated more than Cottrell's exploration of "the Learning Zone."

As leaders, it is easy to become stale. Cottrell cautions leaders to avoid becoming complacent within your comfort zone, a space that he proposes is a "forceful enemy to your potential." He proposes that you avoid complacency by entering the "Learning Zone."

Cottrell's Learning Zone is comprised of three rooms, the Reading Room, the Listening Room, and the Giving Room. These three rooms present an approach for everday action from the Learning Zone.

The Reading Room

Your everyday action that brings you to the reading room is simple. Read every day. When you commit 10 minutes per day, you will learn from over a dozen books every year. I'd propose that books are important but that a regular scan of the leading leadership and management blogs will also serve you well. My action plan is simple, set aside time everyday for reading.

The Listening Room

Listening is key to learning, leadership, and collaboration. Listening is inexplicably linked to learning, conversation and sharing which as noted by learning expert Jay Cross, become the "stem cells for learning." Your everyday action? Take time to listen and learn. Listen intently to every conversation.

The Giving Room

Give back by teaching and helping others succeed. By teaching others, you become more accountable for the approaches that you are teaching. Aristotle wrote, "Teaching is the highest form of understanding." Your everyday action from the Giving room? Take the time to give back by teaching other.

I like simple learning actions. Learn by reading, listening, and giving. With these daily actions, we don't need to think that learning has to be complex.

Thanks for reading. And don't forget to read, listen and give.

don

Influence, An Introvert's Perspective

I am an introvert and unfortunately, live in a world that tends to like heroes. But I treat it as a challenge. I feel that I can lead and influence without the power, charisma, or advantage that extroverts commonly seem to possess.

In the book Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy, book contributor Don Frederiksen, (I heard of that guy) provides six recommendations for introverts who want to quietly influence without leaving their introvert zone. The essential message; leverage your introversion. Use your natural tools to talk less but communicate and influence more.

1. Be friendly. Say hi and bye. Don’t forget to smile. People will say yes to people they like.
2. You are an expert in silence. Use it. A pause in your words adds powerful punctuation.
3. Look people deeply in the eye. People will nod in agreement.
4. Communicate on paper. Think of the times you go to meetings lacking an agenda? Influence the discussion by outlining your thoughts and distribute the paper as a discussion aid. And because you bring paper, volunteer to record and summarize. As Tom Peters says, whoever “writes the summary…wields great power.
5. Follow-up fastidiously. Simply put, do what you say.
6. Show gratitude, say thank you. Go a little out of your way with this simple message.

Influence doesn’t have to be loud. Influence can emerge from someone who is not the life of the party. Introverts can leverage their introversion to wield more influence. As Jonathon Rauch wrote in Caring for your Introvert, “If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place.”

Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy is a crowdsourced, collaborative effort of 171 contributing authors on topics such as influence, social medea, innovation and more. Proceeds of the book benefit the mission of charity:water, a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

charity:water is also a participating partner in Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action.

I encourage you to purchase Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy. Your purchase today will bring improvement to you and the greater good.

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Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly,

don

Would you cover your leader's back?

Would you cover your leader's back? And what was it that formed this bond and trust?

It's a complicated pair of questions that says much about the relationship that you may or may not have with your manager.

In contemplating these questions, I encountered a humorous test of leadership in a story shared by authors Jon R. Katzenbach and Zia Khan in the book Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the Informal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results

The test is similar to the test I identified in Leadership Acid Test where the test is based on a concept orginally inspired by Michael McKinney at Leadership Now. In my earlier post I wrote,

Pick a Leader with a title. If that Leader no longer had a title, would you still follow him/her.

The Katzenbach story is based on the tale of two very different Navel officers with whom Katzenbach served. Officer Inskeep was a straight-up, command and control officer. He led strictly between the lines. Officer Stewart was more informal in his approach, leading outside the lines.

The story describes the plan for a full-dress Admiral's inspection that included a sword salute by the officers when the admiral arrived on deck. However on the day of the inspection the captain announced that the officers would NOT do the salute. Neither Inskeep and Stewart were on the ship at the time of the announcement.

If you reported to Inskeep (the command and control officer) and knew about the sword announcement, would you tell him? His men didn't and his sword salute was not only the only one but the clumsy action also knocked the Admiral's hat into the water.

On the other hand Steward had been informed about the plan by his reports, they covered his back.

Would you cover your leader's back? Would your reports cover your back?

This makes for an interesting test of leadership and clearly highlights a key benefit of informal leadership cited by Katzenbach.

The "Cover your back" story is depicted in the video below. It is recommend.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and informally.
Don

The Magic of Showing Up

A Woody Allen quotation says,

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Like many, I generally chuckle when I see this quote. Maybe it's because the bar seems to low. Nevertheless, it's a quote that you see applied to many contexts including success, motivation, dedication, friendship, even love. Woody Allen in an MTV interview in 2008 seemed almost embarrassed about the quote when he said, "That thing has been quoted 20 million times. It's one of the least-witty things I've ever said."

A recent experience caused me to consider the magic of showing up. My team was approaching a deadline and I frankly had little to add to the project. Nevertheless, I showed up, to support, to eliminate distractions, to encourage focus. It was all that I could do. Did it have an impact? You can't really tell. Any impact was immeasurable. But the team was successful.

But I was curious so I sought out experts who had written on showing up and found several.

For example, leadership consultant and coach Tim Porterhouse concisely summarized the magic of showing up when he wrote in Leadership is Showing Up:

By Showing Up you send a message that says:

• This is vital to me and the company
• I care about your work - and I want to be part of it
• I won't ask you to do something that I would not do myself
• I want to lend a hand - no matter how small my contribution.

Even management guru Tom Peters added a twist to the notion when he wrote about the impact of showing up. He cited a modification that he sourced from the PersistenceUnlimited blog.

So increase you chances by 80%. Show Up!

The twist in the Allen quotation makes a compelling case for the magic of showing up.

Thanks for reading. Please show up and lead quietly.
don

Newness Calls for Renewal of Principles and Values.

My current situation calls for renewal. Newness abounds.

I recently started a new job with a new company, new team, a new role, and new responsibilities. My daughter recently graduated from high school and planning and preparation for her new life at college is in full swing. My family's health is good, the best that it has been in years. That's a great new feeling. Finally, we just celebrated the first day of summer. The new season, and the newness of my current situation calls for renewal.

I'm not talking about major reconstruction. But it is a great time to revisit the values, rules, and guiding principles that I believe in. Some of these principles may have gotten lost during the recent busy and stressful season.

It could be a big task. However, I'd like to reach into my past and remind myself of my core principles through two of my previous posts.

Quiet Leader Commandments - a Redux

I originally presented this list of commandments as a simple list that requires no additional explanation. I believe the list still stands without elaboration.

1. Always learning, always improving, always practicing.
2. Stay balanced.
3. Be resourceful, be a problem solver.
4. Show vision.
5. Be nice, be decent, be fair.
6. Serve.
7. Show gratitude.
8. Communicate well.
9. Listen always.

In this I believe! I feel renewed already.


Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps!

Another great list for renewal is cited in 2008 comes courtesy of author, consultant, and entrepreneur, Raj Setty. Beyond Code: Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps!. The eBook is available for FREE from Setty's web site.

It is a great list of reminders about how to set yourself apart. If you are looking to distinguish yourself, just reading the table of contents provides a motivating list of suggestions and reminders.

1. Learn
   
2. Laugh
3. Look
4. Leave a Lasting Impression
5. Love
   
6. Leverage
7. Likability
   
8. Listen
9. Lead

As Raj explores each "l" item, he offers suggestions, insights, quotes, and an accountability assessment. Even if you feel that you have mastered the idea, Raj's reminders and assessment can bring new insight and renewal. The Amazon reviews on his printed book validate my sentiments; it is an overwhelming five-star selection. Did I mention that the ebook is FREE?

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and renew with me.

don

Lead like a statistician - without the math

If you are a fan and student of analytics and infographics, I hope you visit, subscribe and follow the work and discovereris of Nathan Yau and his Flowing Data blog. (Blog, Twitter) I am a data geek in my day job and appreciate the growing use of analytics and infographics as a means of communicating and making sense of data.

My interest in infographics brought me to the Flowing Data site and Nathan's collection of unique and informative visualizations. I'll share a couple of favorites before I get to the leadership message of this post.



A favorite blogosphere chuckle came with the post Data Underload #6 - Bed Head. Here is a snippet, check the post for the entire visualization.







In another clever application of infographics, Nathan represents familiar movie quotations in Data Underload #12 - Famous Movie Quotes. Visit the post to see the entire collection.









What about Leadership?

Nathan wrote a post on his Flowing Data blog entitled Think like a Statistician - without the math. In the post, Nathan describes informal and practical insights that he has learned about working and playing with data. He suggests that " the most important things I've learned are less formal."

The parallels to leadership struck me almost immediately. The Lead Quietly blog focuses on the informal, practical and "quiet" principles of leadership, collaboration, community, balance, and vision. One of my missions is to share the informal insights that I have discovered and validate those insights through links to other work in the leadership space.

Statistics and leadership both call for principled action and I found the overlap surprising. Let's review Nathan's five "statistical" principles with a leadership twist:

Attention to Detail
In data work, Nathan suggests that, "it's the little things that end up being the most important." You should be looking for outliers, missing data points, and inconsistencies.
In my view, the parallel leadership attribute is vision, the ability to sense and observe what is going on around you within your teams. I believe that as a leader you know the little details about the people around you. If you know about your colleagues children and spouses, this attention to detail will serve you well in building trust and community.

See the Big Picture
While attention to detail is important, statically speaking, Nathan encourages us to not get get "too caught up with individual data points or a tiny section in a really big dataset."

In leadership you also need vision to see the big picture. Leaders need big-picture vision to have an awareness of the of the people, skills, processes, and opportunities around you. I previously wrote about vision in Act with vision - the Vision of Quiet Leadership. See the Big Picture, it's a practical piece of advice for leaders and statisticians.

No Agendas
In statistics, Nathan describes the dangers of letting preconceived ideas influence the results of a study or experiment.
Leadership requires the same type of objectivity. There is a certain maturity required of good leaders that allows them to work without personal agenda. As I cited before in The Maturity and Balance of Quiet Leadership, maturity may be the basis for objectivity, patience, and humility exhibited by great leaders.

Look Outside the Data
To think like a statistician, Nathan proposes that the:

more you know about how the data was collected, where it came from, when it happened, and what was going on at the time, the more informative your results and the more confident you can be about your findings.

Whereas, he proposes context, context, context for better understanding of data, I couldn't help but think of mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness for a parallel concept in leadership. A quote from George Ambler from The Practice of Mindfulness on the Practice of Leadership blog proposes this context awareness:

When navigating through uncertainty, especially during times to rapid change, crisis or when facing novel situations the ability to be fully present is critical. This is because in these types of situations, “When faced with this kind of turbulence, mindfulness becomes even more important. You need more, rather than less, information, and it is generally more difficult to get. You need to leverage your strengths and find those people who are succeeding despite the disruptions. You need to stay calm.“

Mindfulness allows you to establish awareness of your surroundings and understand the context, context, context of your situation.

Ask Why
Nathan states, " this is the most important thing I've learned, always ask why." For a blip in a graph, you should wonder why it is there.

I equate "asking why" to curiosity. Curiosity links directly to learning and passion.

Curiosity is a measure of your passion. In Curiosity as a measure of passion, I quoted Steve Roesler of the All Things Workplace blog who stated,

successful employees of every ilk display a never-ending curiosity that emerges as "passion" in a meeting room filled with people.

Effective leaders recognize the value of curiosity. They are driven to ask why?

The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity.
- Albert Einstein

Principles as a Compass
Principles guide action and clearly statistics and leadership are principled genres. As Stephen Covey writes in Principle Centered Leadership,

Correct principles are like compasses: they are always pointing the way. And if we know how to read them, we won't get lost, confused, or fooled by conflicting voices and values.

Thanks for reading. Mesh. Lead quietly and like a statistician.
Don

Top 150 Management & Leadership Blogs and so much more

I'm a fan of lists. I'm a huge fan of the list of the best management and leadership blogs that Jurgen Appelo compiled at the Noop.NL blog. It is much more than a blog roll of great blogs. Here is what you get:

It's a list of the top 150 leadership and management blogs that includes the best in the business. I could spend hours navigating from blog to blog to receive the best insight on leadership that the blogosphere has to offer. I'm also pleased because my humble and amateur efforts at LeadQuietly made the list (#123). I appreciate being on the edges of this community.

Because we can't afford to spend hours and hours navigating from blog to blog, Jurgen has also provided a link to the efforts of Jay Goldman at the Make Work Meaningful blog who supplies the list in an OPML file that can be imported into Google Reader. I was already following many of these blogs in my Google Reader but really appreciate the full list. For me, my Google Reader allows me to follow hundreds of blogs across a half dozen interests areas. It is essential for my daily reading.

You are already getting your money's worth but wait, there is more. Follow these top bloggers on Twitter by following the Twitter list that Jurgen compiled. Get the list from the post. Click the list URL and you are ready to follow the group. It's a big job to compile a list like this. Thank you, Jurgen.

And yet there is more to learn from Jurgen. In another post entitled How to Make a Top Blog List, he provides a detailed description on how this list was compiled. Reading this description of his algorithms is a great lesson in page rank, traffic rankings, Technorati Authority, and more.

Thank you, Jurgen. This effort demonstrates the best of the blogosphere. Its a real meshing effort.

Thanks for reading. Please Lead Quietly and Mesh.

Don

Posted via web from Meshing Up